Purely Academic
by storiewriter
Summary: Philip's questions started out personal, then quickly became more academically-driven as time went on. Dipper really wished they'd stayed personal. (Transcendence-AU)


**A/N:** TAU, as per usual.

* * *

"Alcor, um, I have a couple questions."

Dipper looked up at Philip from looking through another scrapbook; it had been made by Henry for Mabel. "Uh, sure. What's up?"

Philip adjusted his glasses, feet set apart just enough to look stern but arms crossing and uncrossing in a way that just made him appear nervous. "So, well, Bentley told me that when you, I don't know, saved him in a trauma-inducing manner that you, I think, ate him?"

He closed the book, stamping down on the guilt rising up his gut. "I—yeah, that's the gist of it."

"Sooo," Philip put his hands on his hips, then crossed them over his chest. His chin raised, and then it lowered fractionally. "Did you actually…digest any of him? Should I be worried that something's missing?"  
Had it been any other book, Dipper would have dumped it on the ground in his haste. As it was, it tumbled out of his hands and onto the couch when he stood. He waved his hands from side to side. "No! No! Nothing's been eaten, nothing's been digested, Bentley is as Bentley as he was five hundred seconds before I…put him into a pocket dimension that only I can access—"

"Your stomach," Philip said, feet inching out to shoulder-width. He looked almost intimidating. Then he shifted his legs just wide enough apart to look ridiculous, and Dipper almost laughed before remembering that he was currently in metaphorical-could-quickly-become-real shit.

"I— _technically_. But that dimension. Nothing was left."

Philip narrowed his eyes. "Nothing even…spiritual or mental, right?"

Dipper shook his head so fast he saw double of Philip. "No! Definitely not! If anything, he's gained experience—on his own! He didn't assimilate anything, so don't make that face!"

He stared at Dipper a few long seconds. Dipper was the strongest demon in existence who had near-omniscient knowledge of everything with a reputation to uphold, so he most certainly was not feeling a wobbly smile, nor was he feeling sweat start to bead down the side of his face.

Philip finally grunted and relaxed. "Good. That's. That's good. Even though you shouldn't have done it."

"Absolutely not, no sir, not happening again!" Dipper batted one of his wings away from drawing up protectively around his front without looking away from Philip's face.

Philip stared at him another few long moments, then nodded. He didn't say another word before turning and leaving the room to do who the hell knew what.

Dipper sat back down on the couch and pulled the old scrapbook back into his lap. He opened it, and looked down at Henry's smiling face.

Tracing a finger around the edge of it, he couldn't help but crack a grin himself. "You'd like him," he said, and then grimaced at the thought of Henry _and_ Philip teaming up against him. "You'd like him too much."

The thought, in the wake of centuries without a reincarnation, was bittersweet.

* * *

The next time, Dipper was inhaling a jumbo package of gummy fruity snacks he'd gotten in a long-shot summons by an older woman who just wanted her old cane back. He was understandably engrossed in eating them, so when Philip tapped him on the shoulder, he startled. One of the chairs in the kitchen scraped against the tile as he jostled it with his leg, and his wings smacked into the cupboard and table.

" _How are you so quiet_ ," he hissed, setting the half-empty bag on the counter just in case he was ambushed again.

"Uh, I don't know," Philip said. He eyed the candy, then Dipper, then the candy again. "Um, I have another question."

Dipper raised an eyebrow. "About…"

"Um. I. When you ate Bentley, did you…literally eat him?"

Dipper fidgeted and avoided Philip's gaze. "Uh, I don't know what you mean?"

Philip crossed his arms over his waist, and then brought them up across his chest. "I mean, did you eat him? Like you eat food. Through the mouth."

"NO!" Dipper shuddered from head to toe and couldn't stop himself from shaking his head, tongue out. "No no no that's _gross_."

"Are you sure?" His arms twitched, but he didn't move them away. In fact, he squared his stance. "I mean, I know you've definitely unhinged your jaw before, so it isn't totally impossible—"

"Philip I am a demon and the imagery that you are painting here is unnerving _me_ can we please not and no I did not literally eat your son through my mouth."

"Okay then," Philip said, relaxing and rubbing at the back of his neck. He leaned against the table, hip to the edge. "If you don't mind then, could you show me, um… _how_?"

"How…did I do it?" Dipper looked up at the holo-clock above the entryway and narrowed his eyes. "Bentley should be home soon, I don't know that it's…"

Philip waved his hand in front of his face, jacket sleeve flapping as he did so. "No, he's at Torako's for a talk. He said it was more like an interrogation, but everything's probably fine!"

Dipper stared at Philip. "Have you met Torako?"

"That's why it's going to be fine!" Philip said, grinning. "Trust them."

Even so, Dipper prodded lightly on the soul bond between himself and Bentley, tested it for any extreme negative emotions. It twitched on Bentley's end, like he was half-aware of it, but there was nothing other than apprehension and guilt there. He was going to need to teach Bentley how to use that in the future, just in case.

"Erm, about that way you ate Bentley…"

Dipper, startled away from prodding at their bond, looked at Philip. His face was barely visible through a thick green haze, littered with swirling _fraquinge_ that betrayed his excitement, and an underlying haze of lilac concern.

"It's no fun that way," Dipper said, and crammed a mouthful of gummies in his mouth. "You can't taste anything. Only way to get me to is to m҉͘ake̛ ͜͡a̶͡ ̡d͞e̴͟á̛͢ĺ."

Philip's greens were quickly tinged with a wary sort of _mellow_ , and he put his hands in the air as he took a couple steps back. "All right, sounds good. As long as it wasn't through the mouth."

"Never," Dipper said, and really that should have been the end of it.

* * *

Dipper sat on the couch and closed his eyes, reaching out into the cosmos, engrossing himself in the search for a familiar soul, any familiar soul, because he'd finally realized that Mizar wasn't enough, that it wasn't fair to Mizar to put the weight of both their humanities on them, and he couldn't do it any more but he needed that human connection, needed _StanHankSoosWillowAcaciaWendyPaci—_

"Um, Alcor, I have just one more teensy question."

Dipper slammed back into reality, just on the cusp of reaching the location of one of _his_ , and repressed the urge to snarl at this Mizar's father. "What."

Philip was crouched down right in front of him, glasses too bright and too green and Dipper, though he knew that vision was uncolored by them, couldn't believe it was. "While I know that you couldn't possibly know what it was like _in_ your own stomach, but what was it like carrying Bentley in your stomach? Was it like eating too much? Like being pregnant? Did you not feel it at all?"

"I…" Dipper stared. "I understand all those words apart, but together…what?"

"When you had Bentley in your stomach. How did you feel?" Philips eyes were too bright, too wide, too wondering and all Dipper could feel was that particular curl of guilt.

"You can…" Dipper swallowed. "You can feel them there. Afraid. Helpless." _And you liked it_ , he remembered. _You liked it, even knowing it was Bentley. You liked the power and the fear and the headiness._

"Oh? So you feel their emotions? Fascina…ting…" Philip peered at him, eyes narrowed and guarded. "You felt Bentley's pain. And you didn't let him out."

"Not right away," Dipper said, pulling his knees up to his chest and staring at the laminate flooring. "I knew it was him. I knew I had to get them out. But not right away."

He had done it before. He had pulled a person into his stomach, marveled at the energy held underneath its skin, and slowly pulled the flesh away before the power burst out of its remains and into him, and the feeling was glorious and dizzying and beautiful. The entire time Bentley and the woman and her child had been in there, he had his finger on the shred button and had wanted to push it.

It had taken so much to say no to himself.

"I don't want to talk about it," Dipper mumbled. The flooring was peeling at the far corner; Philip might need to do something about that.

"…Okay," Philip said in that voice that meant 'I'm going to corner you later and make you spill everything so help me God' and it honestly terrified Dipper to think of confessing this because Philip should never, ever trust him, knowing the thoughts that went through Dipper's mind. "I was really wanting to know the physical sensations. Hence the 'was it like pregnancy' question."

Dipper paused, ran that question through his mind a few times, then propped his chin on his knees. "How am I supposed to know what it feels like to be pregnant?"

Philip smiled and took out a stylus. "So you've never been pregnant! Have you simply never felt the desire to bear a child, or do you lack that particular ability?"

He did not like the direction he thought this was going. "What."

"Well," Philip said, sitting down properly and staring up at Dipper in thought. "In a few of the Alcorian Cycle books, the Woodsman and Alcor end up having sex and the result of that is that Alcor becomes pregnant with their child; this is possible due to the fact he is a demon, the author suggests in writing. Is that false then, or have you simply never wanted to have one?"

"Oh my fucking word," Dipper said, hiding his face between his knees. "Oh my fuck no. No. I cannot. Will never. Have never. Have never been able to. No. Just no."

The door to the apartment opened, then closed. Dipper really really _really_ wanted Bentley to get him the hell out of this situation.

Philip scrawled something on the tablet. "Good to know, good to know…so for the record, you have also never had a child with another demon—or even a human? Because integral to the Alcorian Cycle is Gliese, who is the child of Mizar and yourself."

Dipper moaned, "Noooooo no no no fuck no. Don't go there. I never. No."

"Right, right…" Philip murmured something to himself, then said, "Going back to the question about Bentley being in your stomach—was he literally under your skin? Could you see people underneath your coat—could you—"

Dipper pushed his face into his hand and groaned.

"…I don't even want to know what's going on, do I?"

"Bentley," Dipper moaned. "Bentley, save me."

"But we have so much to talk about!" Philip said. "Now, about Gliese—why the common 'misconception' about her being your child if you never had children? Is she the product of thought, as was Athena in the old Greek Mythos?"

Dipper looked up as Bentley blanched and stepped away from the door, hands up and looking just slightly less tired than usual. "Ha, no. Dad's got his research-mode on. Good luck, Al-Dipper."

"No, take me with you!" Dipper cried, but Bentley had ensconced himself in the safety of his own room. He looked at his outstretched hand, then back at Philip, who was looking both curious and contemplative.

"Why did—"

"No," Dipper decided, and he blipped out of the physical realm and into the Mindscape. If Philip wanted to ask any more awkward questions and get equally awkward answers from Dipper, there had better be compensation involved.


End file.
